The examination of the ‘Bungle Affair’ cyber-rape disturb me as I had never realized such a crime could occur online. Though exu and the other victims were not physically harmed, the instance clearly created emotional harm, exu experiencing real-life ‘posttraumatic tears’ and demanding retribution. A governing body may not need to monitor the goings-on of LambdaMoo, but the ‘Bungle Affair’ reinforced the idea that an individual, particularly in cyberspace, has a right to go about their life unmolested and suggests a need for some governing entity to offer these protections.
Lessig demonstrates the technological feasibility of this kind of governance by showing that these bodies could use laws to shape the ‘architecture’ of the internet and how it fundamentally works, thus offering protections in the open environment of the internet, and states that any regulation of the internet ought to be limited by transparency and guided by the principle of not being over-inclusive, but Lessig leaves open who has the sovereignty to regulate the internet, which spans the globe.
Though I take issue with John Barlow’s claim that the internet is a utopian place in which no regulation is required, Barlow’s text makes the point that, though the individuals on the internet are citizens of countries, the open nature of the internet makes it difficult for any one national government to claim full regulatory power over the internet - does crime in cyberspace, which spans across the world, still fall under the jurisdiction of the US government, for example? Given the format of this course and our examination of the Constitution in the context of cyberspace - apparently, yes it does fall under the purview of the US - but given such an open medium, oughtn’t the international community come together to establish a new set of policies which all participants and nations can follow? What am I misunderstanding?